20 Heavy Michelle Zauner Quotes from Crying In H Mart on Cancer and Grief

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Excerpt: An honest and raw collection of Michelle Zauner quotes from Crying in H Mart on grief and what it was like losing her mom and aunt to cancer.

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Introduction: The Nature of Grief

As I write this introduction, the feelings of having to put down my dog are still fresh and quite raw.

I’ve written about those feelings every day over the past week since the decision was made and I still feel very much like I was cheated… like somebody must’ve gotten this whole thing wrong… like I’m bound to wake up from this nightmare at any moment and get back to my known and beloved reality.

I didn’t want to move on.

I didn’t want to accept a new reality.

I didn’t want to think or write about anything else.

Whenever I did something distractionary, I felt fogged and heavy.

Whenever I would rise from my chair or open the living room gate, I felt a nagging absence.

And whenever I thought I cried all I could cry—something arbitrary would make me cry some more.

…And this, I gathered from my own experience, is the nature of grief.

No sense to be made.

No lessons to be applied.

No explanation that’ll do.

Which is very much what reading Crying in H Mart felt like to me… An honest collection of raw feelings that tried to put into words the weight of it all… of dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis… of trying to make every aching second along the way count… of ultimately losing a mother and aunt to cancer… and of trying to make sense of the contorted reality and stay mentally okay at each step along the way.

Much like how arbitrary things like getting up from my computer chair or opening my living room gate or arriving home after a long day at work were grief triggering for me after I lost my dog… H Mart was grief triggering for Zauner. For those who haven’t read the book yet, this quote gives context as to why Zauner named the book how she did:

“Within five years, I lost both my aunt and my mother to cancer. So, when I go to H Mart, I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck; I’m searching for memories. I’m collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when they did. H Mart is the bridge that guides me away from the memories that haunt me, of chemo head and skeletal bodies and logging milligrams of hydrocodone. It reminds me of who they were before, beautiful and full of life, wiggling Chang Gu honey-cracker rings on all ten of their fingers, showing me how to suck a Korean grape from its skin and spit out the seeds.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 11)

The book offers little by way of life lessons and insights and much more by way of human emotional understanding and how we process and move on from it all. It’s a heavy list of emotional quotes that’ll shine a light on the darker side of our emotional spectrum. One that should be illuminated… that should be explored… that should be shared and absorbed.

For this is a natural and fundamentally important part of life to absorb. One that nobody ever wants to, but one that each of us, eventually, will have to. And if you can relate to the shared experiences of others now, you’ll be able to better share the experiences you have later. Something that couldn’t be more important when you’re forced to trudge through such a dark and heavy place.

My hope is that if and when that time comes for you, you’ll be showered with support and have the resources you’ll need to bear the weight and carry on forward and through. It won’t be easy. It’ll probably be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do. But, it’ll give you a depth of appreciation for life that nothing else could ever match—an unparalleled gratitude for life, living, and experiencing things that’ll make your time on earth more rich and vibrant.

Maybe not right away, but eventually. This is my hope. And I hope this list helps.

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The List: 20 Heavy Michelle Zauner Quotes from Crying In H Mart on Cancer and Grief

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6 Quotes Describing Grief

“Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 6)

“My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary. I can tell you with a straight face what it was like watching my mom’s hair fall out in the bathtub, or about the five weeks I spent sleeping in hospitals, but catch me at H Mart when some kid runs up double-fisting plastic sleeves of ppeongtwigi and I’ll just lose it. Those little rice-cake Frisbees were my childhood, a happier time when Mom was there and we’d crunch away on the Styrofoam-like disks after school, splitting them like packing peanuts that dissolved like sugar on our tongues.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 5)

“I remembered how when I was a child I would slip my cold feet between my mother’s thighs to warm them. How she’d shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort, that that was how you knew someone really loved you. I remembered the boots she’d broken in so that by the time I got them I could go on unbothered, without harm. Now, more than ever, I wished desperately for a way to transfer pain, wished I could prove to my mother just how much I loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body close enough to absorb her burden. It seemed only fair that life should present such an opportunity to prove one’s filial piety. That the months my mother had been a vessel for me, her organs shifting and cramping together to make room for my existence, and the agony she’d endured upon my exit could be repaid by carrying this pain in her place. The rite of an only daughter. But I could do no more than lie nearby, ready to be her advocate, listening to the slow and steady beeping of machinery, the soft sounds of her breathing in and out.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 86)

“I wondered if I should try to explain how important it was to me. That cooking my mother’s food had come to represent an absolute role reversal, a role I was meant to fill. That food was an unspoken language between us, that it had come to symbolize our return to each other, our bonding, our common ground. But I was so grateful for Kye’s help that I didn’t want to bother her. I chalked these feelings up to the unwarranted self-involvement of an only child and decided if Kye wouldn’t teach me, I should commit myself to another role.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 98)

“This obsession with my mother’s caloric intake killed my own appetite. Since I’d been in Eugene, I’d lost ten pounds. The little flap of belly my mother always pinched at had disappeared and my hair began to fall out in large chunks in the shower from the stress. In a perverse way I was glad for it. My own weight loss made me feel tied to her. I wanted to embody a physical warning—that if she began to disappear, I would disappear, too.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 100)

“We fell asleep in my childhood bed. We still hadn’t had sex since we got married and as I drifted off, I wondered how I ever could. I couldn’t fathom joy or pleasure or losing myself in a moment ever again. Maybe because it felt wrong, like a betrayal. If I really loved her, I had no right to feel those things again.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 153)

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Related: 32 Suleika Jaouad Quotes from Between Two Kingdoms on Cancer, Suffering, and Survival ↗

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2 Quotes on Grief and Support

“When one person collapses [from grief], the other instinctively shoulders their weight.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 153)

“I talked about how love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor. How I felt it most when he drove up to New York after work at three in the morning just to hold me in a warehouse in Brooklyn after I’d discovered my mother was sick. The many times these months he’d flown three thousand miles whenever I needed him. While he listened patiently through the five calls a day I’d been making since June.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 143)

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2 Quotes on Grief and Art

“It was difficult to write about someone I felt I knew so well. The words were unwieldy, engorged with pretension. I wanted to uncover something special about her that only I could reveal. That she was so much more than a housewife, than a mother. That she was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create. Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book. There could not be one without the other. Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 159)

“It was comforting to hold her work in my hands, to envision my mother prior to pain and suffering, relaxing with a paintbrush in my hand, surrounded by close friends. I wondered if making art had been therapeutic for her, helped her navigate the existential dread that came with Eunmi’s death. I wondered if the late bloom of her creative interests had shed light on my own artistic impulses. If my own creativity had come from her in the first place. If in another life, if circumstances had been different, she might have been an artist, too.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 168)

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Related: A Short Story About Frida Kahlo And The Unexpected Gifts Pain Can Provide [Excerpt] ↗

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5 Quotes on “Tricking” Grief with Plans

“If we always had something to look forward to, we could trick this disease. Not now, cancer, there’s a wedding! And then a tasting in Napa! Then an anniversary, a birthday. Come back when we’re not so busy.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 145)

“I knew it was risky to add even more pressure to already tumultuous circumstances, and yet it felt like the perfect way to shed light on the darkest of situations. Instead of mulling over blood thinners and Fentanyl, we could discuss Chiavari chairs and macarons and dress shoes. Instead of bedsores and catheters, it’d be color schemes and updos and shrimp cocktail. Something to fight for, a celebration to look forward to.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 129)

“We figured that maybe if we were busy taking in a place neither of us had ever been, we could manage to forget, just for a moment, how much our lives had fallen apart.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 171)

“Most nights, after an early dinner we’d return to our hotel rooms and I’d crumple onto the bed and sleep for fourteen to fifteen hours. Grief, like depression, made it hard to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. The country felt wasted on us. We were numb to all spectacle and feeling, quietly miserable and completely clueless as to how to help each other. All I wanted to do was go home. I longed to hide in my bedroom and dissociate with the comforts of my PlayStation and its soothing farming simulation games, not wake up at six a.m. to take a van tour of another pagoda and marketplace while my father bartered for half an hour over the equivalent of a couple of USD.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 172)

“It wasn’t about the money. I wanted to stay as busy as possible. I wanted to work my body as hard as it could go so there was no time to feel sorry for myself, to bind myself to a routine that would keep me grounded in the last remaining months before Peter and I left Eugene for good. Maybe I was punishing myself for my failures as a caretaker, or maybe I was just afraid of what would happen if I slowed down.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 193)

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4 Legacy Quotes from Zauner’s Mom

“Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always ‘save ten percent of yourself.’ What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. ‘Even from Daddy, I save,’ she would add.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 18)

“In marked contrast to the other domains of parental authority, my mother was loose when it came to the rules regarding food. If I didn’t like something, she never forced me to eat it, and if I ate only half my portion, she never made me finish the plate. She believed food should be enjoyed and that it was more of a waste to expand your stomach than to keep eating when you were full. Her only rule was that you had to try everything once.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 22)

“Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 4)

“I loved that she did not fear god. I loved that she believed in reincarnation, the idea that after all this she could start anew. When I asked her what she’d want to come back as, she always told me she’d like to return as a tree. It was a strange and comforting answer, that rather than something grand and heroic, my mother preferred to return to life as something humble and still.”

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 135)

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If these quotes from Crying in H Mart resonated with you, you should read Zauner’s book in full. It comes highly recommended:

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